{"id":1682,"date":"2023-06-20T14:07:18","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T14:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gb22.eco.de\/report-from-the-honorary-president\/"},"modified":"2023-09-20T11:27:05","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T11:27:05","slug":"report-from-the-honorary-president","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gb22.eco.de\/en\/eco-board\/report-from-the-honorary-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Report from the Honorary President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Report from the Honorary President<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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2022 \u2013 Phasing out of virtual meetings!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Some peers may have been quite content to carry on interminably with virtual meetings and working from home. For our association, however, this was not an option, given that we tend to live and breathe on the strength of our networking and pick up on people\u2019s thoughts on technical and political matters affecting the Internet industry. Of course, special consideration was given to Covid-related health issues and precautions were taken for the entire eco team. If I look at my calendar from 2022, the appointments up to April were almost exclusively virtual. After that, however, they were mostly hybrid events \u2013 where people either showed up in person or participated via telephone or video conferences. Much as I love digitalisation, I personally find video conferences in the eco environment to only be optimal on rare occasions, and my preference is on-site attendance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February, a virtual meeting took place for new employees. This was a novel experience, as we otherwise wouldn\u2019t have got to \u201cmeet up\u201d for the first time, due to Covid and the fact that we were all working from home. For me, this was a virtual gathering that certainly made sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, a major topic in my sphere was the new German State Treaty on Gambling and the associated establishment of a \u201cJoint Gambling Authority of the Federal States (GGL)\u201d, a public law institution based in Halle. The central task of the GGL is to regulate the German online gambling market by reviewing and authorising cross-state gambling offers on the Internet, as well as ensuring that the authorised gambling providers comply with the rules to protect players from gambling addiction and manipulation. A first interim report on the work of this authority is to be prepared at the end of 2023. Then we will get to see how this authority deals with illegal gambling offers and how many licences will already have been issued up until that point. However, it can already be said that the new German State Treaty on Gambling is actually still a protective treaty for the lottery monopoly and completely disregards data protection. In 2022, the 7th Federal Congress on Gambling<\/a> took place in Berlin with eco\u2019s participation. My entire presentation appeared in the Spiegel magazine under the \u201cContributions to Gambling\u201d issue 3\/2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The German Internet Governance Forum (IGF-D), suffered from staff changes and virtual meetings in 2022. On-site meetings are those that allow it to function most effectively; in this landscape, virtual or hybrid events are not proving to be very effective. Therefore, \u201creal\u201d events will resume in 2023. The topic of IGF also includes European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG). In the year under review, due to Covid, a hybrid event was organised again in Trieste, with this following on from the 2021 hybrid event. The core questions below were covered in the \u201cfocus areas\u201d: <\/p>\n\n\n\n